Building Generative Predictive Transformers for Sign Language
SignGPT is a five-year EPSRC Programme Grant developing an AI-powered translation system capable of unconstrained, bidirectional translation between British Sign Language (BSL) and English. The project unites world-leading expertise in computer vision (CVSSP, University of Surrey), large-scale machine learning (VGG, University of Oxford), and BSL linguistics (DCAL, UCL), in close partnership with British Deaf organisations.
Unlike previous approaches constrained to predefined vocabularies or gloss-mediated pipelines, SignGPT targets full linguistic fluency — handling the spatial grammar, non-manual features (facial expression, mouthing, eyegaze), classifier/depicting constructions, and rich iconicity of BSL in real-world, conversational settings. The centrepiece is a novel generative predictive transformer architecture that jointly models visual sign production and linguistic structure at scale, trained on a newly collected large-scale BSL corpus. Community co-design and rigorous Deaf-user evaluation are embedded throughout.
Norfolk Deaf Festival — Prof. Richard Bowden will deliver an invited talk and join a panel at the Norfolk Deaf Festival.
Generative AI for Sign Language Workshop (CVPR 2026) — Prof. Richard Bowden gave an invited keynote on AI translation of sign languages.
Deaf Expo / BDA Conference — SignGPT exhibited at the British Deaf Association Conference, 15–16 May 2026.
IET Surrey Lecture — Prof. Richard Bowden delivered an invited lecture on AI translation between sign and spoken language, 14 January 2026.
AI for Sign Language Translation, Production & Linguistics — BMVA Technical Meeting, 10 December 2025. Full event accessible in British Sign Language. Event details →
Deaf in AI & Technology Workshop — Hosted by the DCAL Research Centre at University College London, 9 December 2025. Workshop archive →
MSLR Workshop at ICCV 2025 — Prof. Richard Bowden gave a keynote on automatic translation of sign languages, 20 October 2025.
Oxford Deaf Festival — Prof. Richard Bowden joined as a panel member, 26–27 September 2025.
BDA Conference — SignGPT exhibited with a stall and sponsorship at the British Deaf Association Conference, 17–18 July 2025.
SLRTP Workshop at CVPR 2025 — 3rd Workshop on Sign Language Recognition, Translation and Production, co-organised by the SignGPT team, 12 June 2025.
SignGPT programme launched. The EPSRC Programme Grant officially commenced, with all partner institutions beginning recruitment and initial corpus collection. The official project site is now live.